Kyarra, a novice Singer, seeks to destroy evil and learn the truth about her mother and father, in the conclusion to the Echorium Sequence Trilogy. Reprint.

In communities throughout precontact Mesoamerica, calendar priests and diviners relied on pictographic almanacs to predict the fate of newborns, to guide people in choosing marriage partners and auspicious wedding dates, to know when to plant and harvest crops, and to be successful in many of life's activities. As the Spanish colonized Mesoamerica in the sixteenth century, they made a determined effort to destroy these books, in which the Aztec and neighboring peoples recorded their understanding of the invisible world of the sacred calendar and the cosmic forces and supernaturals that adhered to time. Today, only a few of these divinatory codices survive. Visually complex, esoteric, and strikingly beautiful, painted books such as the famous Codex Borgia and Codex Borbonicus still serve as portals into the ancient Mexican calendrical systems and the cycles of time and meaning they encode. In this comprehensive study, Elizabeth Hill Boone analyzes the entire extant corpus of Mexican divinatory codices and offers a masterful explanation of the genre as a whole. She introduces the sacred, divinatory calendar and the calendar priests and diviners who owned and used the books. Boone then explains the graphic vocabulary of the calendar and its prophetic forces and describes the organizing principles that structure the codices. She shows how they form almanacs that either offer general purpose guidance or focus topically on specific aspects of life, such as birth, marriage, agriculture and rain, travel, and the forces of the planet Venus. Boone also tackles two major areas of controversy—the great narrative passage in the Codex Borgia, which she freshly interprets as a cosmic narrative of creation, and the disputed origins of the codices, which, she argues, grew out of a single religious and divinatory system.

The enchanted land of the Sierra Estrella holds many secrets. The legend has passed from father to son and young Zip is mesmerized by them. When Achak, his father, disappears, the legend is set aside and the young boy leaves home in search of answers. He finds himself in the middle of the legend as he realizes a truth kept hidden from him by Achak and his mother, Marguerite. The Dark One knows the truth and works in earnest to keep Zip from his true purpose. He meets Ronnie and Maria, along with a shaman with a habit of disappearing when under attack, and, with their help, gains the courage to face his inner demons and the dark forces of the world before the moon covers the sun. The enchanted land of the Sierra Estrella holds many secrets. As the legends pass from generation to generation young Zip finds himself in the middle of the legend as he realizes a truth kept hidden from him by his late father. Through his journeys across the desert, Zip gains the courage to face his inner demons leading him to find his true purpose. True purpose lies within. Hidden in plain sight. It is meant to be found by looking into the light. The story of a young boy in search of his father. His journey takes him through the enchanted Bosque Mesquite to the summit of the Sierra Estrella. On the way he meets those who give him the strength to find his true purpose. A story that parallels the journey through life and the search one’s true purpose.

* The final adventure in the award-winning Echorium Sequence. * Eleven years have passed since the Khizpriest's attempt to build a palace of dark crystal to break the power of the Echorium. A new generation of Singers is emerging, among them Kyarra - Frazhin's own lost daughter, raised on the Isle of Echoes by the Singers with no memory of her father. Frazhin hatches a final desperate plan to destroy the Echorium, and Kyarra is the only one who can stop him. She has the help of a beautiful boy-bird, who knows the secret of the yellow flowers that grow in the Quetzal Forest. But when she comes face to face with Frazhin, which will prove stronger: Kyarra's dark blood, or the Echorium's Songs? "Fast paced action and surprising plot twists... a satisfying conclusion." School Library Journal.

In the early 1960s, pianist Horace Tapscott gave up a successful career in Lionel Hampton’s band and returned to his home in Los Angeles to found the Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra, a community arts group that focused on providing community-oriented jazz and jazz training. Over the course of almost forty years, the Arkestra, together with the related Union of God’s Musicians and Artists Ascension collective, was at the forefront of the vital community-based arts movement in Black Los Angeles. Some three hundred artists—musicians, vocalists, poets, playwrights, painters, sculptors, and graphic artists—passed through these organizations, many ultimately remaining within the community and others moving on to achieve international fame. In The Dark Tree, Steven L. Isoardi draws on one hundred in-depth interviews with the Arkestra’s participants to tell the history of the important and largely overlooked community arts movement of Black Los Angeles. This revised and updated edition brings the story of the Arkestra up to date, as its ethos and aesthetic remain vital forces in jazz and popular music to this day.

On their first journey away from the safety of their island home, two novice Singers learn important lessons when they must confront an evil Khizpriest and stop him from stealing the power of their life-controlling Songs.

The legend of Quetzalcóatl is the enduring epic myth of Mesoamerica. The gods create the universe, but man must carefully tend to the harmony of the world. Without spiritual attention to harmony, chaos may reign, destroying the universe and civilization. The ancient Mexicans, like other peoples throughout the world, wrestled with ideas and metaphors by which to know the Godhead and developed their own concepts about their relationship to the universe. Quetzalcóatl came to the Toltecs to teach them art, agriculture, peace, and knowledge. He was a redeemer god, and his story inspires, instructs, and entertains, as do all the great myths of the world. Now available in paperback, the Lord of the Dawn is Anaya’s exploration of the cosmology and the rich and complex spiritual thought of his Native American ancestors. The story depicts the daily world of man, the struggle between the peacemakers and the warmongers, and the world of the gods and their role in the life of mankind.